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• Beginner Photography
24 Photography Tips for Beginners in 2024 • Landscape Photography
• Wildlife Photography
My all-time favorite tips that any beginning photographer should know! • Portraiture
BY SPENCER COX | 53 COMMENTS
• Post-Processing
LAST UPDATED ON JANUARY 1, 2024
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Whenever I think of a useful photography tip, I always write it down for later. Most • Camera Reviews

of them are forgettable, but some are so helpful that I try to tell them to as many • Lens Reviews
• Other Gear Reviews
photographers as possible. This article contains 21 of the best. These bite-sized
• Best Cameras and Lenses
photography tips are easy to understand, covering everything from beginner
camera technique to creativity and composition. If you’re learning photography, PHOTOGRAPHY TUTORIALS

these should be especially helpful for you along the way.

1. Work with Your Composition

To take engaging photos, you need to be engaged with what you’re doing. Don’t PHOTOGRAPHY LANDSCAPE
BASICS PHOTOGRAPHY
just fly by on autopilot. Instead, put thought into your composition and try to
make your photos as good as possible.

That starts with knowing the basics of how to compose good photos. Don’t cut
off important parts of your subject with the edge of your frame. Keep your WILDLIFE MACRO
horizons level, and try to eliminate any distractions in your photo by adjusting PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTOGRAPHY

your composition. See if your photo has a sense of balance and simplicity.

If the photo doesn’t look good on your first try, keep experimenting until you get
it right. It is so easy to depress the shutter when something looks good and then
COMPOSITION & BLACK & WHITE
stop, but if you consider a few alternative compositions, chances are one of them CREATIVITY PHOTOGRAPHY
will be better than the first.

NIGHT SKY PORTRAIT

PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTOGRAPHY

STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
PHOTOGRAPHY VIDEOS

UNIQUE GIFT IDEAS

NIKON D800E + 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm, ISO 400, 1/100, f/5.6. Photo by Nasim Mansurov.

2. Use the Camera You Already Have

Camera gear is not all that important.

There are countless cameras, lenses, and other accessories on the market today.
We spend a lot of time reviewing them at Photography Life, and it’s true that
some are better than others (or better suited for a given job). But once you’ve
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tested enough of them, the real takeaway is that pretty much everything today is
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So, use the camera you already have, and don’t look back. In almost every way,
today’s entry-level mirrorless cameras are better than the top-of-the-line film Subscribe to our newsletter
SLRs or even the DSLRs of ten years ago. Yet, somehow those film
photographers managed to capture beautiful, iconic photos that still look great
today.

Much more important are your creative skills and knowledge of camera settings.
Focus your effort on those, not on collecting camera equipment.

Taken with the Nikon Z50, an entry-level mirrorless camera

3. Learn Which Settings Matter

There are a lot of camera settings, and it takes some practice to get them right,
especially as a beginner. Even advanced photographers won’t always do
everything perfectly. But it’s worth learning how to set your camera properly, and
which camera settings matter the most, so you have the best chance to take the
photos you want.

First, try practicing with camera modes other than full Auto. You won’t learn
anything if your camera is making all the decisions for you. It might be confusing
at first, but hopefully our articles on aperture, shutter speed, and ISO will give
you a good head start. Those are the three most important settings in all of
photography.

Aside from aperture, shutter speed, and ISO, learn how to focus properly by
practicing with the different autofocus modes. You’ll probably prefer single-servo
autofocus (also known as One-Shot AF) for stationary subjects, and continuous-
servo autofocus (also known as AI Servo) for moving subjects. Don’t use manual
focus unless it’s so dark that autofocus isn’t working.

Lastly, shoot in Raw if you want to edit your photos, or think there’s any chance
you’ll edit them in the future. JPEGs look good out of camera, but the files have
much less latitude for post-processing. (If you aren’t sure, shoot RAW+JPEG, and
keep the RAWs for later just in case.) See RAW vs JPEG for more.

To capture photos like this, it helps to have an intimate understanding of camera settings. Two-
exposure blend.

4. Don’t Overexpose Highlights

When you are picking your camera settings, it is critical to avoid overexposing
highlights in a photo. The reason? It’s simply impossible to recover any detail
from white areas of a photo. Personally, I prefer the sky in my photos to have nice
texture and color, rather than being just a big, featureless blob, and I bet you do
too.

It’s pretty easy to keep your highlights intact. But this is where shutter speed,
aperture, and ISO are so important. These are the only camera settings that
directly affect the brightness of a photo (ignoring flash settings, of course). Even
exposure compensation – an important setting itself – just tells your camera to
change one or more of these three variables.

When you’re taking photos, watch the camera screen to see if there is any
overexposure. If there is, the first thing you should do is lower your ISO to its
base value (usually ISO 100). If it’s already there, use a faster shutter speed. That
will take care of the issue. As for aperture, make sure it isn’t set to a crazy value
(f/32, f/45, etc.) and you’ll be good.

If your camera is mirrorless and has a histogram or zebras, enable them. These
tools allow you to check your exposure and more easily get a properly-exposed
photograph.

NIKON D800E + 24mm f/1.4 @ 24mm, ISO 100, 6/10, f/16.0

5. Pay Attention to the Light

Probably the single most important part of photography is light. If you take a
photo with good light, you’ve taken a huge step toward getting a good picture.
But what counts as good light? It’s not all about sunsets.

Often, the goal here is to balance the light’s intensity between your subject and
background. Even if you’re photographing an amazing sunset, the photo could
be ruined by a completely dark and silhouetted foreground.

The easiest way to solve this is to pay attention to the direction and softness of
the light. If the light is too harsh, you could get bad shadows going across your
subject, which is especially a problem for portrait photography. If the light is
coming from an unflattering angle, see what you can do to move the light source
(in a studio) or move the subject (outdoors) – or wait until the light is better
(landscape photography).

Also, if you’re taking handheld pictures, make sure there is enough light. If not,
use a flash or move where it’s brighter. The easiest way to get bland, discolored
photos is to shoot in environments without enough light.

NIKON D7000 + 105mm f/2.8 @ 105mm, ISO 800, 1/320, f/3.2

6. Take Your Time

It’s easy to make mistakes in photography if you aren’t careful. The best way
around this is to slow down and take your time whenever possible, particularly
when you are first beginning to learn photography.

First, double-check your camera settings. If you’re shooting outdoor portraits on

a sunny day, but you’re using last night’s settings for photographing the Milky
Way, something is terribly wrong. Slow down and take the time to get it right.

Then, keep the same mindset for every other important decision. Is your
composition as good as possible? Did you autofocus in the right place? Have you
done everything possible to improve the lighting conditions?

And don’t listen to people who tell you to avoid reviewing photos in the field.
Sure, it’s a bad idea to review photos when something amazing is happening in
front of you, but you’ll almost always have some downtime between shots. Figure
out the problems with an image in the field – not back at your computer.

NIKON D7000 + 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17mm, ISO 100, 0.6 seconds, f/8.0

7. Move Your Feet

It’s easy to get stuck in one place while you’re taking pictures. Don’t fall into that
trap. Instead, move your feet (or your tripod) as much as possible. Climb on top
of things, change the height of your camera, walk forward and backward, do
whatever you need to do – but keep moving.

If you take a dozen photos from the same height, facing the same direction,
without moving your feet or tripod at all, guess what? They won’t be very
different. If your entire portfolio is taken from the same height and without any
experimentation, you’re missing out on some great photos.

Moving around is the only way to change the relative sizes and positions of the
objects in your photo. Don’t like that your subject is too big and the landscape in
the background is too small? Stand back and zoom in. Want to fix a rock that
looks distracting? Move around until it’s out of your composition, or too small to
be a nuisance.

For wildlife photography, pay very close attention to the angle and height of your
shot. Animals usually look better when you are at eye level with them, and it also
tends to give backgrounds that are farther away, giving more subject isolation.

NIKON Z 7 + NIKKOR Z 24-70mm f/4 S @ 24mm, ISO 64, 1/125, f/10.0

8. Know When to Use a Tripod

Tripods are one of the greatest inventions in photography. They all but eliminate
one of the trickiest problems there is – a lack of light. With tripods, you can shoot
multi-minute exposures and capture details so dark that they are invisible to the
human eye. Even in a brighter scene, tripods improve the stability of your
composition and help you take sharper photos.

So, when should you use a tripod? If your subject is stationary, almost always.
That means landscape photographers, architectural photographers, and still life
photographers better have a good excuse if they aren’t using a tripod.

Macro photography is another case where tripods are essential. At high

magnifications, even the excellent in-body image stabilization (IBIS) of today’s
cameras cannot compensate for the very low light and long shutter speeds
required for truly excellent macro work. Even if you are using flash, it is very
difficult to get the plane of focus right. The only solution is a tripod.

Event photography and action are a bit different because it’s true that a tripod
can slow you down. The same is true of travel photography; as much as you may
want to bring along a tripod, it might not be worth the hassle.

That’s fair, but know that you’re missing out whenever you leave your tripod at
home. If you offered me the choice between an entry-level DSLR and a tripod
versus the best camera/lens combo on the market without one, I’d pick the tripod
kit every time.

NIKON D810 + TAMRON 15-30mm F2.8 VC USD @ 22mm, ISO 64, 1/5, f/11.0

9. Pay Attention to the Edges of Your Composition

When you’re composing a photo, it helps to pay careful attention to the edges of
the frame. Simply put, the edges have an exaggerated impact on the “feel” of
your photo!

For starters, make sure that your subject has enough breathing room so that it’s
not bunching up against the edge of a photo. And certainly don’t cut off an
important element, like the top of a mountain, unless you have a very good
reason.

Along the same lines, any distractions in your photo will draw more attention if
they’re close to the edge, because they’re dragging a viewer’s attention further
from the main subject of the photo. If you only think about the main subject and
don’t pay attention to the rest of the frame, you might end up with a sloppy
composition.

NIKON D7000 + 24mm f/1.4 @ 24mm, ISO 100, 1 second, f/11.0

10. Know When to Use a Flash

Flashes aren’t just meant for dark environments.

Don’t get me wrong – they’re great if you need some extra light. Get an external
flash, tilt it at the ceiling, and use a relatively long lens (50mm or longer).
Everyone you know will be amazed at the quality of your event photos. It’s the
easiest way to get good results without actually knowing what you’re doing.

But flashes are useful outdoors, too, even in the middle of the day. If you’ve ever
heard of “fill flash,” this is why it’s so important. You can fill in ugly shadows on
your subject just by using a gentle flash – and most people looking at the photo
won’t even be able to tell.

It’s silly, but I like to tell people that their camera’s built-in flash is more useful on
a bright, sunny day than in the dark. That advice holds just as true here.

Taken with flash, image by Lola Mansurov

11. Clean Your Camera Lens

I’ve seen too many people walking around with the front element of their camera
lens dirty, dusty, and smudged. That’s the easiest way to get blurry photos 100%
of the time.

Of course, a little bit of dust won’t do any harm; it won’t even be visible in an
image. There are small particles of dust inside every lens, which are impossible
to clean without taking apart the lens – and they have no impact on a photo
whatsoever.

Instead, I’m talking about lenses that have never been cleaned, with grime and
fingerprints that haven’t been removed in ages. Do yourself a favor and get a
microfiber cloth and lens cleaning solution. Bring them along on trips and use
them at least once a week. Check out How to Clean SLR Camera Lenses for more
information.

12. Don’t Use a Cheap Filter

The second easiest way to get blurry photos 100% of the time is to use a cheap
filter on the front of your lens.

Personally, when I just started out in photography, my grandfather gave me an

old, clear filter from his film camera. It fit my lens perfectly; I was so surprised
that I kept it on my lens all the time, never worrying if the glass was up to today’s
standards or not. Turns out that it wasn’t. The corners of all my photos were
blurry, and any mild bright area in the photo (like the sky or a lamp at night)
turned into wicked flare. Here’s a photo I took with this filter, followed by a crop:

NIKON D5100 + 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 26mm, ISO 400, 1/30, f/5.0

But, when you look at just a minimal crop, the blurriness is easy to see:

Don’t make the same mistake I did! Yes, this was an old filter, but cheap ones
today do exactly the same thing. Personally, I never use a clear, protective filter
on my lens anymore, except in environments where I also need protective
eyewear. If you do need to use a filter, make sure it’s a good one from a name
brand like B+W, and not the first on the low-to-high price list on Amazon.

13. Learn Basic Post-Processing

Post-processing isn’t very high on the typical photographer’s priority list, but it
definitely should be. Although postprocessing cannot fix a bad photo, it can turn
a good photo can turn into something truly exceptional.

It’s easy to overdo it when you’re post-processing, so the most important thing is
to make sure none of your edits are permanent (AKA “destructive editing”).
Either use the Save As command to preserve your original files or, better yet, edit
in software like Adobe Lightroom or Capture One Pro that stores your edits in a
separate file rather than baking them into the image.

Post-processing is about imparting a mood and guiding your viewer’s eye in an

image. You’ll get better and better at this over time. My top recommendation? Be
subtle. You don’t want your photos to look over-processed.